


We Were Born Sick (You Heard Them Say It)

by starrywrite



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, HIV/AIDS, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 20:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5553497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrywrite/pseuds/starrywrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Once upon a time, there was a little boy who always wanted to love another little boy. One day, he finally found that love and it was wonderful. I’m supposed to use gloves. I’m supposed to do this. I’m supposed to do that. I’m supposed to not kiss him. I’m not supposed to be only 45 years old, and taking care of a 35 year old young man who’s a hundred years old and dying. […] He’s fine, he gets sick, he gets better, he gets sicker. He’s afraid I’ll leave him. I told him I wouldn’t leave him, that I never for one second would think of leaving him, but he doesn’t believe me. It’s hard to believe in much these days. But we must never stop believing in each other.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Born Sick (You Heard Them Say It)

**Author's Note:**

> my goal as a writer has always been to write something raw and real, and something that make people Think and Feel (ffs i rly did not intend on that rhyming) and hopefully this fic does that, even a little bit. 
> 
> this fic was inspired by the movie “The Normal Heart” (which is so beautiful but SO sad and it made me cry like a baby tbh) and it is based around the AIDS crisis in the 80s in New York - so this fic takes place in the 80s and in NY, instead of London. 
> 
> i tried to be as accurate as possible when writing this, as i don’t want to offended or spread any false information - however if there is anything politically incorrect with my fic, let me know and i can fix it asap! also just to go on record, this fic is going to be pretty angsty and sad tbh but there’s NO main character death, i promise!! there is also a happy ending! so don’t throw rocks at me haha. 
> 
> please let me know what you think of this if you read it, feedback is much appreciated! <3

There’s a man sat on the train with thick, black lesions on his face and neck - similar to the ones Dan is hiding on his stomach and legs. People stare at him like he’s an animal at the zoo. Some of them look at him with disgust on their faces, many get up and sit elsewhere because no one can stand to be within a few feet of someone with the Gay Cancer. Some people whisper about the poor man and don’t even have the decency to be discrete about it. It makes Dan sick with anger, he’s never been so furious in his life than he has been in the past three and a half years. Fuck all of these straight people and fuck their straight world. He hates them. He hates them because they don’t fucking care. He just wants to scream at everyone on the train, shout at them them and remind them that they’re all fucking assholes and that this man is dying and he doesn’t deserve this, that none of them fucking deserve this. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything. 

Maybe when his lesions spread to his face like the man on the train, he’ll finally find his voice. Maybe. 

* * *

He meets up with Phil at the church and his stomach drops as he walks closer to the building. “Hi,” Phil greets him as he nears him, his voice soft and sweet like honey. He pecks a kiss to Dan’s cheek and Dan bites his tongue when he feels the urge to remind Phil that he really shouldn’t kiss him anymore. It’s not that he _wants_ Phil to stop kissing him, that’s the last thing he wants in all honesty, but it’s safer this way. And keeping Phil safe is Dan’s top priority now. Especially since it’s too late for him.

“Are you ready for this?” Phil asks him. 

A breathless chuckle escapes Dan’s lips, a sound so bitter it almost tastes foul on his lips. “Not even a little bit,” he replies. The piece of folded paper in his pocket feels heavy, he feels weighed down, and he doesn’t think he has the strength to move forward. 

“It’s going to be just fine,” Phil reassures him. He reaches towards him and places a hand on his shoulder and says, “If Peej is right, and Charlie really is somehow listening, or watching over, us or whatever, I think he’s really going to appreciate what you have to say today.”

Dan can’t even muster up a fake smile for Phil’s sake, but his words really do bring him even the slightest sense of comfort and he whispers, “Okay.” He takes a deep breath and reaches for Phil’s hand, squeezing it tightly in his own. Phil’s hands feel so warm against his frigid skin and whenever he feels Phil’s body heart, it’s a gentle reminder that he’s not dead yet. “Let’s go,” he murmurs quietly, and Phil nods in agreement, leading Dan up the concrete steps and inside of the church.

The two of them have been here more times than they can count lately, and they’ve had to say goodbye to more friends than they would ever care to. What really kills Dan is that it’s not just _them_ who lost someone - day after day, someone is losing a son, a brother, a lover, a friend. And there’s nothing he or anyone can do about it. 

It’s damn near impossible for any gay man to get a proper funeral service these days - hospitals are refusing to issues death certificates, funeral homes refusing to cremate bodies without death certificates. Dan and Phil are pretty sure that Charlie’s boyfriend had to bribe a funeral home to even look at his body. That’s why Dan, Phil, and their friends have begun taking matters into their own hands. But more importantly, they’ve been taking care of each other because Lord knows that nobody else will. The whole thing is a bloody outrage and Dan’s blood boils when he thinks about it for far too long, but, once again, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. 

Nothing at all. 

Dan and Phil exchange somber “hello”s with everyone already there and they linger about until everyone’s arrived, and their makeshift service can begin. Dan feels the tears burning at his eyes before he even steps up to the podium at the front of the church but he refuses to let them fall, and he stands up straight with the kind of false confidence he’s perfected over the past few months. He squares his shoulders and looks up at everyone seated in the pews before him but he doesn’t look at anyone, not even Phil. He can’t, or he will for sure start crying. And he’s pretty sure that once he starts, he won’t be able to stop.

“Charlie,” he starts, his voice magically steady despite the fact he feels like he’s crumbling from the inside out. “Has been a friend of mine for a long time; he was the first friend I made when I moved to the city and meeting him was the start of me meeting so many of you, my boyfriend included.” A small smile tugs at his lips when the memory of Charlie introducing him to Phil resurfaces in his mind. He remembers the wide smile on Charlie’s face and how hard he laughed when Dan had be so utterly baffled that there was another gay man in the area. He remembers the time Charlie took him to his first gay bar, how he helped him decide what to wear and how he stayed by his side the entire night so no creepy old guys would hit on him. There’s a tightness in his throat now, and he doesn’t feel very much like smiling anymore. 

“He was sort of like the big brother I always needed,” he says, his voice softer than it was a moment ago. “He understood me more than my own brother ever did and he was always there for me. And now,” his voice wavers a little. “Now he’s gone.”

There’s more Dan had planned on saying, he had written an entire, beautiful eulogy for Charlie, lamenting on the beautiful life he had lived but the words have gone blurry as his eyes fill with tears once again and he shakes his head, mumbling to himself, “I can’t deal with this.”

He vaguely sees Phil about to stand up but the older boy freezes when Dan crumbles up his piece of paper and angrily slams his hand down on top of the podium. “I can’t deal with this,” he repeats, louder this time. “We are losing an entire generation.”He grips the sides of the podium so tightly, his knuckles go white and his hands begin to shake. “Young men at the beginning…” he can’t bring himself to finish that thought and he shakes his head, muttering, “Just gone.” He takes a breath, trying to compose himself before he can continue. “Choreographers, playwrights, dancers, actors. All of those plays won’t get written now, all of those dances never to be danced. And I’m mad. I’m so _fucking_ mad,” he hisses the word, part of him feeling bad for saying it in church, but he’s got himself riled up now and he can’t quite calm himself down. “I - I keep screaming inside, ‘why are they letting us die? Why is no one helping us?’””

He looks out at his friends, their eyes filled with tears and pain. And everyone knows the answer to what Dan has to say, but none of them want to hear it. Despite that, Dan says it anyway. 

“Here’s the truth,” his voice shakes as he speaks. “Here’s the answer, they just don’t like us.”

* * *

Phil has been keeping contact cards of all of his friends who have passed away. He removes their name from his Rolodex and puts them in a pile, held together by a rubber band and kept hidden away in the drawer of his desk at work. Dan doesn’t entirely understand why he does it, but he doesn’t stop him - even when his pile continues to grow. 

* * *

It’s been so hard lately for Dan and Phil to _be_ Dan and Phil. On the surface, everything seems fine and normal, but the both of them know that it’s different now. They’re distant, strained. Preparing themselves to say goodbye so when the time comes maybe it will hurt a little bit less than if they were to pretend that everything is fine. They tried that for a while - acting as if nothing was wrong, acting as if Dan wasn’t sick. But pretending is tiring, and Phil has never been a good actor, and the last thing either of them want is for their relationship to exhaust them. So they’ve stopped pretending, and now Dan wishes they hadn’t because Dan and Phil are no longer _Dan and Phil_. 

Even though he knows he shouldn’t, even though he knows Phil doesn’t want him to, Dan blames himself. Even more so, he blames his illness. He still remembers clear as day when he first found out he was sick with this Gay Cancer (Dan hates that term more than anything because that’s what the _straights_ in the media have been calling it, and the only thing Dan hates more than his illness being referred to as ‘the Gay Cancer’ is heterosexuals). He remembers getting out of the shower and finding the first lesion on his leg; he remembers so clearly the way his heart had nearly stopped in his chest, how he dropped to his knees and knelt over the toilet because he was so sure he was going to throw up. He remembers crying so hard that he couldn’t breathe, and then crying some more when Phil came home. 

And now the lesions have spread from Dan’s tummy and legs to his back and his neck, and he hyperventilates whenever he looks at himself in the mirror because he looks so hideous. He looks so _sick_.

And it’s not fucking fair. Because for the first time in his life, he’s so fucking happy. And so fucking in love. He found the love of his life, met the man of his dreams, he’s with the one person he wants to be with and grow old with, and now he’s going to fucking die. 

He clings to Phil in the middle of the night, after a long day of holding back tears, and he sobs, “Please God, just give us one more year.”

* * * 

Dan wants to see his mum.

She’s in London, as is the rest of his family, and he hasn’t seen her since the day he turned eighteen, came out, and then ran away from home because he was afraid of everyone’s reactions. He’s always been afraid, he still is afraid. But he wants to see his mum. He wants his mum. 

He’s deliriously sick and sobbing on Phil’s chest and he weeps that he wants his mum, and Phil shushes him and kisses his head, and when Dan wakes up the next day, Phil has two booked two plane tickets to London. 

They’re ridiculously expensive - even with the money they’re saving on Dan’s health because no doctor in their right mind will even look at him - and he feels awful for even mentioning it. But Phil is insistent and he helps Dan pack. 

“You’re wasting your time,” Dan tells him, seated on the edge of his bed, watching as Phil packs two suitcases for the two of them. “No pilot is going to fly me to London, they aren’t even going to let me on the plane.”

“You don’t know that,” Phil says, but Dan can read his voice and while there is a part of him that believes that, there’s a part of him that agrees with Dan. In the beginning, it was easy for them to fake like nothing was wrong with Dan - no one knew he was sick, except for a small, small handful of their closest friends and the thick black lesions that came along with his illness were easily hidden. But now. Now Dan looks like the man on the train, and he doesn’t leave the house anymore because people are just going to stare at him like he’s an animal in the zoo. 

Exasperated, Dan gets up to his feet and grabs Phil’s wrists, pulling him away from the pile of clothes he’s trying to fold and he yanks him up to his feet. “Look at me!” he all but shouts at him. “ _Look at me_ \- no, better yet; look me in the eye and tell me that there is one pilot in the whole of New York who will fly me all the way to London!”

Phil’s eyes widen at Dan’s little outburst and he’s speechless for a moment, but he gently tugs his wrists away from Dan’s grasp and he holds his hands. “I don’t care if we have to walk there,” he tells him. “I am getting you to London, and you are going to see your mum. I promise, Dan, I _promise_.”

Despite everything, Dan knows that Phil Lester never breaks a promise.

* * *

The pilot refuses to fly the plane.

He takes one look at Dan, one look at the lesions on his face and neck, one look at the practically grey man with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a winter hat on his head, and he crosses his arms across his chest like a toddler. The stewardess looks at him with disdain, the passengers on the plane whisper about him, and the pilot refuses the fly the plane.

“Let’s just go home,” Dan whispers to him, but Phil takes his hand and holds it tightly. 

“I am not getting off of this plane unless it’s landed in London,” he tells him, his eyes dark, angry. He says it loud enough so that the pilot, the stewardess, and all of the passengers on the plane can hear him. And he stays rooted in his seat, with the defiance of a toddler yet the determination of a man who knows what he wants and is stopping at nothing to get it. Dan always knew that Phil was stubborn, but he never fails to surprise him. How he manages to cling to his immense strength in times of such turmoil, Dan doesn’t know. But he does know that there is no one in this world who loves him more than Phil Lester. 

Eventually the pilot just gets off of the plane, and they end up waiting for over an hour but they finally get another pilot and he offers Dan and Phil a small smile before he does something that no one else has ever done for them. Treat them like (healthy) human beings. 

* * *

The flight is long and when Dan isn’t sleeping, he’s sick, but it’s worth it when they finally land in London and he sees his mum waiting for him at the airport. He can’t run to her like he wishes he could, he doesn’t have the strength or energy to do much more than walk, but she picks up her pace as soon as she sets her sights on them and rushes straight to them. 

Dan hasn’t seen his mum for almost twenty years. His last memory of her was the look of pure shock and horror on her face when he told her that he liked boys and that he met a boy who wanted to take him to New York. She didn’t say much that day, but her silence and the look on her face said it all and Dan knew that she would never look at him the same way again now. So he left. He packed his bag, met Phil at the airport, and he never looked back. They didn’t speak for a few years after he left, but she finally wrote to him, a long three page letter, telling him that she would always love and accept him, no matter who he loved, and asking him to please come home. Dan never wrote back, because he couldn’t stomach telling his mother that he didn’t _want_ to come home, but he kept her letter underneath his pillow.

When he first found out he was sick, she was the first person he told - after Phil, of course. He rang her, knowing that the long distance call was going to be hell for both of their bills, and as soon as he heard her voice, he burst into tears. And then when he told her why he was calling, she burst into tears. She begged him to come home, begged him to let her take care of him, and all Dan could do was cry because he couldn’t stomach telling his mother that he not only did not want to come home, but that he didn’t need her to take care of him. 

When he sees her today, for the first time in almost twenty years, his heart stops and tears burn at his eyes. He chokes on a sob when he sees her running towards him. Phil has one arm wrapped around Dan’s shoulders but the other he opens wide just in time for Mrs. Howell to throw herself at the two of them, and Phil hugs them both so tightly, Dan feels as though he’s going to pop like a balloon. His mum kisses his head and cries, and Dan cries, and Phil cries, and the three of them stand in the middle of the airport, holding each other and sobbing. 

He finally came home. 

* * *

When Dan had first gotten sick, he had immediately begun expecting the worst to happen. However, for him, the worst to happen was not him dying, it was losing Phil. 

The two of them both knew what was going to come; they had lost countless friends to this disease and they knew that it was only going to go downhill from here. And Phil didn’t deserve to deal with any of it. Maybe Dan did, maybe he didn’t, but he knew for sure that Phil did not deserve this. 

Phil had a Master’s degree, Phil wanted to make movies, Phil was smart and beautiful and he had dreams and goals. And then Dan had gotten sick and everything just _stopped_. Phil had stopped his entire life to take care of his sick boyfriend. He had to work as many extra shifts as he could at an office job he hated just to make sure their bills were paid and that Dan could get his medicine - and then he worked even more after Dan had gotten laid off. He would come home - more often than not - late at night to Dan lying ill on the bathroom floor with vomit on the bed sheets. But he never complained; he would just clean their sheets, help Dan into the shower, hold him when he cried. Without a single complaint. 

Nothing about this is easy, not on Dan and especially not on Phil. But the difference is that Dan _has_ to deal with this; Phil doesn’t. It would’ve been so easy for Phil to leave him, to decide that he didn’t want to deal with any of this, to just call it quits and go on living his life the way he deserved to live it - but he didn’t. He didn’t take the easy way out, even though Dan had told him on more than one occasion that he would understand if he did, but Phil refused. Phil told him that he was in this for the long run - “till death do us part” he had said one day, and after everything he’s done for him, the very least Dan can do is to make his declaration official. 

It isn’t planned, just like most of Dan’s escapades are, and it isn’t perfect, but Phil still cries when Dan asks him, “Will you marry me?” 

He’s lying in a hospital bed, because only a few days after he arrives to London does he fall ill again and has to be admitted into the hospital. His mum takes care of everything so Dan and Phil can, for once, just rest and _be_ together - something that hasn’t happened in months. Dan’s hospital bed is too small for his over six-foot tall self, but somehow he and Phil manage to squeeze next to each other, and Dan clings to him, his head resting on his chest. And he breaks the comfortable silence in the room by whispering, “Will you marry me?” 

Phil is silent with shock at first. “Are you serious?” he asks over and over again, and Dan just smiles and says, “Of course I am.”

He takes Phil’s hands and begins to speak, “I don’t have a ring for you, but as soon as we get back to New York we can look. Hell, I didn’t even really plan on doing this - it just feels _right_ ; like you and I do.” He takes a breath, squeezing Phil’s hands. “I’ve,” Dan starts, then stops, licking his lips. His throat feels dry, his whole body feels shaky. “I’ve never been so in love in my life,” he tells Phil. “I’ve been waiting for a lover like you my whole life, and you haven’t shown up until now, and I’m scared shitless that I’m going to do something to fuck it up.” He tilts his head up at Phil and asks, “Am I crazy?”

“Yeah,” Phil says softly, tears welling up in his eyes, making his blue irises appear brighter. “You are crazy. I’m crazy too - crazy for you.” He presses his forehead to Dan’s, closing his eyes as tears roll down his cheeks and he kisses the tip of Dan’s nose. 

“I love you so much,” Dan whispers to him, reaching for Phil’s hand and squeezing it. “I love you more than anything.”

“I love you too,” Phil whispers in reply, choked up, crying. “Till death do us part, right?” 

Dan nods his head, tears swimming in his eyes. “Till death do us part,” he repeats, his voice cracking and Phil kisses him over and over again, the newly engaged couple giggling happily for the first time since Dan’s diagnosis. Dan is going to die, that much is true, but right here, right now, that doesn’t matter. Because they still have this moment; they will _always_ have this moment. And they will _always_ have each other - nothing, not even illness, can tear them apart. 

_Till death do us part._


End file.
